One Bad Day
by HellequinParty
Summary: One bad day is all it takes to turn the life of one woman upside down and inside out. She's locked away in Arkham Asylum, and, as always, is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can she escape the madness that is Arkham Asylum, or will she become just another raving lunatic? OC, set before and during Batman: Arkham Asylum.
1. Author's notes

This story is just an idea that's been flying around my head like crazy...

So I've decided to let it free.

It starts off slow, just getting a feel for the asylum and what is going on.

Some chapters will be short, others long. I probably won't even update regularly. But eventually I'll finish this story.

And now, on to the prologue...


	2. The Bad Day

"That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day."

-The Joker, _The Killing Joke_

* * *

It wasn't possible.

Oh, well, sure it was _possible_, but highly unlikely.

The judge sent her another icy glare, staring straight down at her over his huge, crooked nose. Her attorney sighed and clapped her on the shoulders, his meaty arm nearly making her knees give out.

"I tried, kid. Sorry." His breath had the scent of cheap bourbon lingering on it. Drunk while working her case, wasn't that justice for you? That was it, that right there. His half-hearted apology was her breaking point.

"YOU ASSHOLE," she howled. Her wrists were chained to the table in front of her, but she rattled the chains trying to break free anyway, screaming as she did so. "You incompetent oaf!" The fat man started to look frightened, removing his arm from her shoulders just as her legs flew out and connected with his knees. There was a sickening crack and screams from around the courtroom, but it was just _so_ satisfying. Something hit her hard in the back then, followed swiftly by a nice crack to the back of the head and instantaneous blackness.


	3. Alice

_But I must be insane  
To go skating on your name  
And by tracing it twice  
I fell through the ice Of Alice_

_Tom Waits, "Alice"_

* * *

It was the screaming that woke her, working its way slowly into her ears until she could no longer ignore it. She sat up, looked around, and released a long, long sigh.

The room was ugly in its bareness, lacking any sort of personality or decoration that could have made it more homely. The walls were grey, the floor was grey, and there was no window. The room's only opening was an imposing metal door, tightly sealed and showing no obvious signs of weakness.

As for furniture, there was her sorry excuse for a bed and a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Spartan and unwelcoming, she knew exactly where she was.

This was Arkham Asylum, Gotham's haven for the criminally insane, and it was a place she certainly did not belong in. Feelings of injustice dragged another prolonged sigh from her as she collapsed onto the cot where she'd been unconscious moments before.

Where the hell had everything gone so wrong?

The job had gone just like normal, a quiet little robbery and then a quick dash to the getaway car. Their little crew had nearly made it outside Gotham when an explosion racked the van, flipping it upside down and throwing the driver sailing through the windshield.

She'd had barely enough time to escape the van alive before it caught fire, let alone grab the money they'd stolen. Her gut wrenched a little as she imagined the money shriveling into useless ash. What a waste.

And then, the bat had just happened to be in the neighborhood...

The door creaked open ominously, and three people entered her bleak little cell. The smallest of the three, a petite brunette woman, dragged a chair and clipboard behind her. She was flanked by two burly Arkham guards, both heavily armed. The woman managed to drag the chair a few feet away from the cot and sit on it, clipboard and pen poised at the perfect angle to begin writing. A guard hovered menacingly on either side of her, neither of their eyes moving from her.

"Hello, Miss Meer. I'm Dr. Young. May I talk to you for a few minutes?"

By the look on the guards' faces, she sure didn't have much of a choice.

"Of course, Dr. Young. Also, call me Starr. Miss Meer's a bit... formal."

As the doctor began furiously scribbling on her clipboard, Starr was reminded of why she never made a habit of visiting doctors.

"Nice to meet you, Starr. I'm sure you have some questions for me."

"Yeah, doc, you see, the thing is, I think there's been some sort of mistake. I don't exactly belong at Arkham. All I did was get caught robbing a bank. Don't see why I'm not in Blackgate right now. " The penitentiary was _much_ better suited for her, seeing that she wasn't bug-fuck crazy.

The doctor flipped quickly through her clipboard before writing again, pausing every now and then to glance at Starr.

"Yes, Mr. Rowles thought you might say that."

Starr felt an involuntary snarl curl her lip at the mention of her incompetent, drunkard of a lawyer.

"Did he now? How much bourbon bought that little statement from him?"

Dr. Young blinked, once. "While he was helping you prepare for your case, Mr. Rowles noted several warning signs of mental illness. Among them, he noted that, 'while Miss Meer has the appearance of a twenty two year old woman, she has the emotional maturity and range of a small child.' He asked the judge to send you to Arkham Asylum for an evaluation. We're just going to do a few tests, and then we'll decide what to do from there."

Starr sat back against the cold grey wall and pondered the legality of the entire situation. It was definitely leaning towards infringing on her civil rights, but how was she going to get out of this when the entire legal system of Gotham was corrupt? For sure, Rowles had said something to the judge, probably as revenge for the rejection of his advances. If she protested, either the doctors wouldn't let her out of Arkham, or the judge would send her right back. So why not serve out whatever exile she had been sentenced to in Arkham, where she could get three square meals a day with no fuss?

She gave Young the best smile she could before agreeing to the tests. One of the guards cuffed her hands behind her back, perhaps a little more tightly than was necessary. He seemed very careful standing next to her, and she wondered just how badly she'd hurt Rowles. Maybe he couldn't walk.

The thought brought a real smile to her face as she was led down the hall, past door after identical metal door, until Dr. Young opened one and beckoned her inside. The same guard shackled her hands to the smooth steel table within, while the other made sure her legs were tightly secured to the chair. Dr. Young sat down opposite of her, motioning the two guards to leave the room.

They were alone then, in the stiffening silence that was punctuated only by the screams and moans of Arkham's many inmates.

"Tell me a little about yourself, Starr."

Aaaahh, there it was, the question they always, always asked. _What makes you twinkle, little Starr? What's going on inside? _ It always progressed to_ What's wrong with you? _from there, and onto her release, if she was lucky. It annoyed her with its simplicity, and she couldn't help but bait the no nonsense doctor.

"Well, I'm a natural red-head."

"I see," nodded Dr. Young. "Is this something you're proud of?"

"Not particularly. Makes for a lot of rather unfunny jokes."

"Do you know why you're here, Starr?"

"I robbed a bank. Or failed to, at least."

"You also assaulted your lawyer in front of a whole courtroom of witnesses."

"He had it coming."

Dr. Young looked unimpressed. "So, is Starr your real name? It seems a bit..."

"Starr is my given name, no alias or anything. It was my mother's idea."

"Tell me about your mother, Starr."

"Wellll," she let the word roll of her tongue, trying to figure out exactly what tale she would tell this time. "She was a real nice woman, pretty too. Guys just fell all over her."

"What did she do for a living?"

"Oh, she stripped, of course. That's what most of the women in our apartment complex did. They used to leave all us kids together, so we wouldn't get lonely or anything. Sometimes she took me along to dance with her."

Dr. Young was scribbling furiously, and it took everything Starr had not to just laugh in her face. Did she really believe all this garbage? Even the slowest therapists she'd had raised their eyebrows at the stripping part.

"Did your mother ever hit or abuse you? Where was your father?"

"Father? Never heard of him. Mom was real nice, but sometimes she got drunk and started hitting. Nothing out of the ordinary, and she was always real sorry when she'd done it."

"I'm so sorry, that's awful. How about your school life, though? What was that like? Were you bullied?"

It hit Starr then; Dr. Young hadn't even bothered to read her file! That was why she was believing this so readily. This doctor deserved whatever lies Starr was going to feed her.

"Oh, it was just awful, doctor. None of the kids liked me at all, and one of the teachers.." She dropped the volume of her voice to a near whisper, as though she were ashamed. ".. well, he, you know."

"Did he molest you, Starr?" The look in Dr. Young's eyes was earnest and pleading, pen poised over her clipboard; it bored Starr to death.

She dropped the hush in her voice and adopted a bored tone as she addressed the doctor. "No, and if you'd read my file, I think you'll find that everything I've just said was a lie."

Young just gave her a long, long look before writing on her clipboard; Starr was more than willing to bet it said something along the lines of 'pathological liar.'

"Well, I'm sorry you didn't feel as though you could be honest with me. We'll have plenty of time to work on building an honest relationship during your stay at the asylum, however."

Dr. Young called for the guards then, leaving Starr to ponder exactly how long she'd be staying at Arkham. Not too long, she reassured herself as she was led back to her cell, number 239. The guards closed the door behind her as she walked to her cot and buried her face in the grey pillow. Not too long, surely.


	4. Papers and Poor Powers of Persuasion

Bruce Wayne was reading the newspaper.

Oh, there was nothing unusual in that. Bruce always scanned the newspaper, eager to hear of any news involving the scummy underbelly of Gotham. He'd wake up (often late in the day, long after the sun had reached its zenith) and comb the whole thing, cover to cover. Then he'd do it again, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything. His butler, Alfred, would patiently wait for him to finish before handing him a tray of warm breakfast.

"Batman on the front page again, Master Wayne?" Alfred always arrived just like clockwork, bearing a tray laden with coffee, bacon, and eggs.

Bruce gave Alfred a long look before throwing the paper onto a nearby coffee table and accepting his breakfast.

"Who else? Though I wish they would focus less on _him_ and more on the criminals he's catching. Don't they ever get tired of reporting on the same thing?"

"Apparently not, Master Wayne," Alfred smirked, glancing at the front page of the Gotham Globe. Most of the page was taken up with a large picture of the Batman, perched on a high building and watching several mafia members being piled into the back of a police van. For the Batman, Alfred mused, it had been just another night.

However, an article just a little further down on the page caught Alfred's attention as he picked up the paper, slightly taken aback by the headline; _**SCANDALOUS COURTOOM DRAMA! **_ The picture accompanying it was tiny, colorless, and showed an average Gotham courtroom bathed in chaos. Citizens and police alike attributed to the disorder of the court, running about as a man lay in the very center of the courtroom, unconscious.

_Last week, another one of Gotham's courtrooms was thrown into chaos during a legal procedure. Starr Meer, a twenty two year old Gothamite, was _ _apprehended a few weeks ago by the Batman mid-heist. Found guilty of armed robbery and assault, Meer was sentenced to an undetermined length of time to Arkham Asylum. While most convicted of armed robbery would be sent to Blackgate Penitentiary, Meer's lawyer pleaded for his client to be taken to Arkham on the basis of mental instability. James Rowles, a well known criminal defense lawyer, took on Miss Meer's case, but noted that she seemed incapable of remorse or higher level emotions. Further review from several prominent psychologists corroborated his testimony. Upon hearing that she had been sentenced to Arkham Asylum, Miss Meer reacted violently towards her Mr. Rowles, delivering a blow that broke both of his legs. She was swiftly detained by courtroom guards and remains under arrest in Arkham Asylum. _

Alfred sighed and replaced the paper on the coffee table. _Today's youth..._

* * *

...was sitting quietly in her cell, contemplating her time so far at Arkham. It had been almost a week now, and her sessions with Doctor Young were just not going well, to be honest. Worse yet, no one would say exactly when she was supposed to be released, which did not bode well for her. With no end in sight, she'd reluctantly begun to settle into the asylum's routine.

Wake up, eat, have her head examined, eat, watch television with the other low security inmates, eat, sleep.

"I mean, there's no mental stimulation at all here, Doc. Sure, Jeopardy's nice, but a month straight is a bit much for anyone, crazy or no." Starr couldn't help but rattle the chains attached to her handcuff, hoping to punctuate her words with the sound. "And haven't we moved past these? I haven't so much as looked at you funny, let alone been violent towards you."

"If you cooperated with me, I might be able to get you books or other materials, as well as allow you to access the gym facility. And the chains aren't just here for my protection, they're for yours as well."

Starr hummed low in her throat. _Right, Doctor._

"What kind of cooperation do you want?"

Dr. Young's ears perked up, almost imperceptibly. "For starters, you could tell me the truth about your childhood. It says in your file that you've been a ward of the state since you were fourteen, but there's no mention of your past beyond that. For all I know, you could very well have had a stripper mother and an absent father."

"No can do, sorry. Feel free to ask another question though."

"This is exactly what I mean. You don't trust me."

"No, not really."

The doctor's lips pursed, and Starr gleefully wondered if she'd hurt the doctor's feelings. Penelope Young wasn't really a bad person; she'd never been outright rude to Starr, nor had she pumped her full of Thorazine and locked her away. However, she _was_ overly ambitious and had no real love for her patients, something Starr found detestable.

"How can we fix that?"

"Unchain me, for starters. I feel like an animal," she pleaded.

"You broke both of Mr. Rowles legs at the kneecaps, Miss Meer. You're not allowed to be unchained, and we've been instructed to transfer you to maximum security if you display any aggressive behavior."

"Oooh, so he can't walk?"

"You take pleasure in the fact that you've caused someone else pain, Starr?" Starr knew she'd pushed it a little too far. _She'd just loooove to write that one down, wouldn't she?_

"No, just him. He's a bit of a pig, to be honest."

"I see. Well, since you've been in treatment for nearly a week and shown no progress, I've decided that medication might be the right course for you. You'll start taking them tomorrow morning before breakfast."

Panic bit at Starr then. If they pumped her full of drugs, would she still be able to function? And why did she need drugs anyway? What exactly had she done wrong? Besides failing to rob a bank, of course.

"Doc, I don't see why I need them. You haven't even given me a diagnosis yet."

"Well, you're proving very hard to diagnose," Young answered simply.

"Did you ever stop and think there might not be anything wrong with me?" Starr kept the anger from her voice, but the words were still fraught with tension. The doctor paused for a moment, tapping her pen lightly against her knuckles.

"No, there's something the matter with you. But don't worry, Starr. Arkham is going to fix you."

_Whether you like it or not, _Doctor Young finished mentally. That was her job, after all.


	5. Invitation to the Party

"Are you sure this is mac n' cheese?"

The chef gave Starr a weary nod before ladling the brown goop onto her plate. Maybe he wasn't used to talking to someone who could actually construct a sentence? She winced at the audible _schlop_ it made upon impact, not looking forward to how _that _was going to taste. Maybe the whole three square meals thing wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be.

She was beginning to see that it wasn't just the food that was sub-par; the company wasn't exactly top notch either. There were a couple of drooling, glassy eyed lunatics at one table, not a single one of them eating their sorry excuse for mac n' cheese. _Huh, maybe they aren't total idiots after all. _

The brown mac n' cheese didn't exactly wiggle when she set it down on the table furthest from them; it _cracked._ A few experimental pokes with her silverware (plastic, of course) were enough to convince her to leave the stuff alone. Instead she sat and wondered how in the _hell_ she was going to get out of Arkham.

It wasn't all bad. She had a bed and... well, the food wasn't great, but it was generally edible. Young had let her read the newspaper every day this week, which was surprisingly liberal of her. The good doctor had threatened medication, but had yet to come through and was providing her with a little contact with the outside world. They'd even let her keep her clothes and forgo the ghastly orange that most patients were forced to wear. If she didn't mess up and misbehave, she might be out of here sooner than she'd previously hoped. A month, tops.

_Clack._

Starr visibly flinched back from the sound of another tray being set across from her, more from reflex than anything. The man who'd set his tray down grinned widely at her, settling down to nibble at his quickly solidifying macaroni.

"Excuse me, this is a private table," she spat mechanically.

The decidedly unfriendly reply only seemed to make the man's grin larger. "I don't see your name on it. In fact, I don't see your name on anything in this room. Would you mind introducing yourself? I don't like not knowing these things."

"You can call me Starr. But it's generally polite to introduce yourself before asking someone else their name."

"Apologies." He temporarily abandoned his food and extended a hand. Starr merely glanced at it before taking a sip of the soda she'd chosen for lunch. Caffeine free, but still better than nothing.

He let his hand drop and returned to his own lunch. "You may refer to me as the Riddler, everyone does."

Starr choked on her soda in surprise, wincing as it burned the inside of her throat and nostrils.

"_The _Riddler?" she coughed. "The guy who leaves those puzzles for Batman all over Gotham?"

"The very same," he conceded smoothly.

Starr knew that gaping at him was rude, but it was just too hard _not_ to. He was reed thin and rather gawky looking, not exactly what she'd been expecting from a super villain. She wondered if he'd ever been outside; his skin was an unhealthy shade of white in contrast with the crimson of his hair. To be brutally honest, it looked awful mixed with the orange of his jumpsuit. A hand unconsciously flew to her own hair, and she wondered if the color was somehow catching.

"Well, nice to meet you," she replied lamely.

"I see that you haven't touched your macaroni. May I have it?"

She ignored the question, sipping her soda and focusing resolutely on the table in front of her. Maybe if she ignored him long enough, he would leave.

"Hmm... I had supposed you were capable of intelligent conversation, but perhaps I was wrong."

No such luck.

"No, you can't have the mac n' cheese," she snapped, irked by his comments about her intelligence. "I'm eating it."

"You're a bit rude, you know," he replied, seeming a bit annoyed himself. It crossed her mind that baiting a super villain who was a known murderer was, perhaps, a bit dangerous.

"Sorry, I've had a bad time these past few weeks," she admitted, hoping it came out sounding somewhat sincere. "I hate it here."

"Ah, first time?"

A slight heat crept into her ears at his insinuation, and she hoped that her eyes didn't make her budding discomfort too obvious. _If he says anything too gross, I'll just call the guards_. "Yeah, something like that."

"So, what are you in for?" Before she could promptly tell him to piss off, he continued, words running in an excited rush. "No, wait, let me guess! You robbed a bank, but got caught by the bat!"

It was tempting to flip her tray into his face, but she restrained herself. Barely.

"And how do you know that, Riddler?"

"I read the papers as well, Miss Meer. Getting caught by the bat just as your van mysteriously blows up? That doesn't seem a little coincidental to you?" The Riddler seemed eager and gleeful about her plight, and that pissed Starr off to no end.

She angrily thrust her tray towards him, splattering a little bit of soda on his ugly orange jumpsuit. "I've lost my appetite. You can have the shitty macaroni." Quite unexpectedly, he laughed, scraping the macaroni off of her plate and onto his own. Too late she realized he'd been given exactly what he wanted.

The guards who monitored the room stiffened as she stormed towards them, and she wondered exactly what kind of expression she wore. "I'm done eating, take me back to my cell. Please," she added, remembering that they reported directly to Dr. Young. No need to have the doctor breathing down her neck as well.

The Riddler continued chuckling as she was handcuffed and led back to her cell.

Asshole.

* * *

It was only much, much later that she wondered why he'd bothered to introduce himself at all. She eventually concluded that it was most likely because she hadn't been drooling or trying to eat her fork. If there was one thing she knew about Gotham's super villains, it was that they just _loved_ an audience for their 'brilliance.'

Take the Joker for example.

Starr shuddered and thumbed through the day's Gotham Globe, feeling as though someone had just dumped a bucket of icy water over her head. Several pictures of the mad man were splayed across the front page, his gleeful grin a stark contrast to the carnage that lay behind him. He'd recently sent hundreds of balloons filled with Smilex to Gotham General in an attempt to 'cheer up' its patients. There had been a few casualties before the Batman arrived to save the day, but considering the Joker's tendencies towards mass homicide, the city had gotten off rather lightly. Although, Starr doubted that was much consolation towards the victims' families. Worse yet, the papers said the man was still at large, though the Batman was surely on his tail by now.

A knock on the cell door startled her away from the paper, and she was somewhat relieved to see a guard peering through the thick iron bars near the top.

"Didn't forget about your appointment with Dr. Young, did you Starr?"

"No way, Maurice." She'd been surprised to find her most regular guard, Maurice Brown, was a genuinely likable fellow who made it a point to be as pleasant as he could towards the patients. It was a small kindness, but not many made the effort. "Well, let's not keep her waiting, Maurice."

Maurice nodded and opened the door, careful to close it behind him. He handcuffed her, not too tightly, but just tight enough that she had very little chance of escaping. _Guess I can't blame him for doing his job well_, she admitted. Maurice reopened the door and led her out into the hall.

Minimum security seemed even more distraught than usual, she noted. One patient was slamming his fists into his door again and again, screaming as he did so. A stick like woman a little further down rattled the bars of her door, screeching at the tops of her lungs. "HE'S COMING, HE'S COMING!" For some awful reason, Starr couldn't bear to look directly at her. There was something about the woman's madness that made her distinctly uncomfortable.

Maurice seemed to realize something was up as well, sweating profusely as he looked at them. "Jesus, you'd think they're being tortured, the way they're screaming." His free hand grasped the portable walkie talkie that always hung at his belt. "Send some orderlies down to minimum security. We've got a bit of a situation down here."

"Negative, Brown. The Batman's on his way, he's bringing the-"

"HE'S HERE! OH GOD, HE'S HERE." The woman's shouts startled Maurice so badly that he dropped the walkie talkie, and both he and Starr watched as the batteries flew across the room, each heading in an opposite direction. She almost laughed; _That was a one in a million drop, Maurice._

"Shit," he swore. The woman kept screaming, her howls now reaching a fevered pitch that was clearly causing Maurice discomfort. He gave Starr a beseeching glance as he pleaded with her. "Starr, you stay right in this spot while I get the batteries, okay? No funny business, please. I just- this woman needs to- please, just stay put."

She gave a quick nod and Maurice dashed off to retrieve the batteries. Her hands hurt as the maniac a few cells down from where she was standing continued to slam on his door. He was certainly going to feel that in the morning.

Maurice had just put the batteries back in when the first alarm went off, shocking Starr into motion. She dashed to the guard's side as he turned the device back on.

"WE'VE GOT TROUBLE, THE JOKER IS FREE. I REPEAT, THE JOKER IS FREE, ALONG WITH SEVERAL HIGH PROFILE INMATES. EVACUATION IS IN-"

The guard on the other end fizzled out as the door behind Starr and Maurice opened. Starr launched herself away from the door just as a long, question mark cane shot out of the entrance, smacking Maurice squarely over the head and knocking him out cold. The woman abruptly stopped screaming, though a steady pounding sound could still be heard a few doors down.

"Well well, what have we here?"

The Riddler was smirking in the doorway, giving Starr a look that made her wish she was back in the relative safety of her cell. He was dressed all in green and purple, complete with a bright green bowler hat. Now _this_ was the super villain she'd heard about. "I do believe it's my rude little friend from lunch, Starr Meer."

"How-how are you out of your cell?" Her heart was hammering in her throat, and her palms were most definitely sweating hand-shaped puddles onto her back.

"You didn't hear? It's all the rage." He gave her cuffs a quick glance before smiling glibly. "Guess you didn't get the memo."

"So, now what?"

The Riddler tipped his hat towards her. "Well, you were rude, but it's only to be expected from someone of your low intelligence. Plus, you gave me your macaroni at lunch, so it seems I owe you a favor."

She nearly laughed at the absurdity of the situation she was in. He was going to spare her life because of macaroni. Yea gods, Arkham _was_ home to the insane.

"Okay, free me from the cuffs then," she requested as pleasantly as she could. The Riddler nodded his assent and fished around at Maurice's belt before retrieving the keys he kept there.

Starr turned her back to him so he could undo the handcuffs, twisting her neck at a painful angle to keep him in view. As though she would trust the RIddler to _not_ stab her in the back given the opportunity. True to his word, however, the Riddler unlocked the cuffs and let them drop to the floor.

"Well, I'll be going now. Look me up if you get out of Arkham alive, kid." He spun to leave and kept spinning, doing a complete 360. "Oh, and consider this your invitation to the party." He handed her a little pin with an eerie smile on it, which she took gingerly, afraid it might explode.

"What party?" He waved off her question and spun again, this time heading for the door.

With that parting puzzle, the Riddler disappeared back out the door he had come in, leaving Starr alone, confused, and kind of hungry.


	6. And Here We Go

AN: There's really no excuse for not updating in so long. I went to an IRL mental hospital for a while and wasn't allowed near computers. I'm really sorry. Seeing the reviews/follows when I came back was really very pleasant. Thank you all.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Batman franchise.

"Do you think I've gone round the bend?"  
"I'm afraid so. You're mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are."  
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

* * *

Starr was stunned into silence, staring at the ghastly little pin pressed between her fingers.

_What party?_

Nothing came to mind; she'd never heard of any party being planned at Arkham, and Warden Sharp didn't exactly seem like the kind of guy to throw a hoe down for his inmates. She shrugged and latched the pin onto her shirt, uncomfortable with the way the green of it stood out in stark contrast to the darkness of her shirt. There was no way someone could miss it, despite its small size.

Shrugging off her discomfort, Starr finally glanced at Maurice.

His breathing was shallow, and a little trickle of blood was sliding down his forehead, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. If what the guard on the walkie talkie had said was true, Maurice would be in serious danger if any of the inmates happened upon him in this state.

So, with a hearty groan, Starr began dragging Maurice _back_ towards her cell, careful not to drop his head on the ground. _Wouldn't want to concuss the poor guy any further now, would we? There should be some sort of good Samaritan award for this..._

He was heavy, something she'd expected but not prepared for. Her arms were protesting vigorously by the time she'd dragged him all the way back into her cell. Moving him onto the comfort of the cot seemed like a pipe dream, so she let him lie on the floor as she pillaged the utility belt he wore around his rather bulky waist. _Sorry Maurice,_ she apologized mentally._ Don't think you'll need them in here, though._

There she found a pistol, a stun gun, and a police baton; these were going to be her only weapons against an entire asylum full of crazies, along with a handful of rusty keys. Upon closer inspection, however, the pistol was empty, and the stun gun seemed completely drained of power. Feeling more than a little annoyance at Maurice, Starr let the two useless weapons fly across the room and skid into the wall.

"Police baton it is," she muttered sourly. After one last glance at Maurice, Starr shut the door to her cell and locked him inside. Hopefully the reinforced steel of the cell would protect him from the worst Arkham had to offer. If not... well, no one could say she hadn't tried, could they?

The prisoners who had been howling only a few moments earlier were eerily silent as she passed by their doors. Oh, she'd walked these same halls before, always under guard and never under pleasant circumstances. Desperate howls and panicked, pleading voices had assaulted her ears each and every time she'd made the march to Dr. Young's office. But now...

Arkham Asylum was as quiet as a grave.

That alone made her hands itch on the worn handle of the police baton. The noise was as much a part of Arkham as the architecture was. Its absence did not bode well for her, she reasoned. And then there were the walls, dotted every now and then with vicious green spray paint proclaiming, "HAHA."

She came to an abrupt halt in front of a vandalized picture, trying to catch her breath and her bearings, as she was quickly approaching a part of the asylum she'd never been before. Quincy Sharp's beady eyes stared down at her from the frame of the nearby portrait, acid green smile so completely at odds with his image that she felt a chill roll down her back. This was the Joker's work, no doubt about it.

"YOU! Turn around now," a voice several feet behind her barked.

Starr's blood froze as she turned. Not one, but three men had somehow sneaked up behind her while she'd been gaping at the Warden's portrait. They were huge, brutishly muscled, and very clearly not the security guards that she'd hoped they would be.

What the hell was going on in this place? Where were all the guards?

One of the men cracked his knuckles menacingly and rocked back on his heels, grinning. His two partners dropped their spent cans of green spray paint on the floor, a loud _clang_ resounding as metal met metal.

"What have we got here?" one of them leered. "You lost, little girl?"

Starr swallowed, backing away from them until she was pressed against the wall, wishing she could melt into it and disappear as they advanced on her.

"Where ya goin', dollface?"

"S-stay back, please," Starr managed finally. These men were _huge_. There was no way she was going to be able to fend off three of them, especially with only a police baton. They'd destroy her at close range. She raised the baton in what she hoped was a threatening manner and they came to a halt, barely a foot from her. Before she could let out a sigh of relief, the men glanced briefly at one another and burst into laughter.

" You think that's going to stop us? A little _stick_?" The man's eyes narrowed suddenly, hardening as he looked at her. One of his arms snaked out, reaching for her throat, ready to crush her fragile neck in his ham-hands-

_THWACK._

And then she was gone, ducking under his bowed legs, running for her life as fast as she could. The man who'd nearly choked her was howling in pain and holding his arm where Starr had managed to strike him with the baton.

"YOU BITCH, GET BACK HERE!" His companions glanced at him, unsure if they were meant to help their comrade or chase after the girl. "What are you waiting for, get her!" he growled. They nodded briskly and took off after her, following their frightened prey around the asylum.

Starr was quickly running out of breath when she chanced a glance over her shoulder. The two burly men were gaining on her, and fast. _Oh no, please no, shouldn't have done that_. _They're going to kill me, gotta hide._

A stitch in her side flared painfully to life as the men drew even closer, and Starr knew with a terrible certainty that if something didn't change now, she was going to die. A hand latched roughly onto her wrist, using her own momentum to throw her headfirst into a nearby wall.

"Gotcha," one of them crowed as she sank to the floor, head spinning. "Now, you're gonna _urk._"

_Urk?_ She opened her eyes and saw nothing but deep, inky black in front of her. For one horrified moment she thought she'd gone blind. And then the darkness moved, darting towards her remaining pursuer. It wasn't a terrified scream that left his lips as the darkness overtook him; it was a shudder and an awful plea.

The situation was familiar to Starr. It had been herself who had been on the receiving end last time, just before she'd been thrown into the hell that was Arkham Asylum.

The dark figure turned around, expression grim and eyes hard as it looked down at her.

This was the Batman.


End file.
